FYI, may need to transition MB to 64-bit next summer, even if it doesn’t benefit from it...

http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/12/01/apple-reminds-developers-mac-apps-must-support-64-bit-in-2018

Chris

---

Just in case you missed it, there is now a Mac on the first page of the Top Computer list,
ID: 6796479 : #16 : TBar : 7.8.4 : [3] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4095MB) driver: 5901.79 : Darwin 16.7.0
It's been a while since that happened. The last time was back when there were Many APs around and the machine was running ATI GPUs.

The current Special Apps work fine in everything up to High Sierra, seems to be a BOINC problem when exiting the completed tasks in 10.13.x. Since only the Mac Pro 5,1 machines can run 10.13.x, I'd suggest anyone with a Classic Mac Pro stay with Sierra 10.12.6 and avoid 10.13.x if you wish to run the CUDA Special App. If anyone is interested, you could probably place one of these old Macs fairly high up in the Top Computer list with just a few higher end nVidia cards. The same problems exist with the Mac versions of the Special App, the last version that works with best results is zi3v CUDA 9. The zi3x versions tend to produce a steady stream of Invalid Overflows. The version for Sierra is here, http://www.arkayn.us/forum/index.php?topic=191.msg4411#msg4411

[Update on old Hackintosh:]

2-14-2018 at 3:42 PM - PST

@TBar,

I just Updated my Hackintosh MAC Pro 3,1 system to El Capitan, 10.11.6 - with Security Update. (15G19009) New NVIDIA Driver Ver: "GPU Driver Version: 10.11.14 (346.03.15f12)" Updated CUDA Driver to 8.0.71 - from memory as, I believe, you stated that CUDA 8.0.71 works best with El Capitan, 10.11.6.

I have NOT yet switched crunching over to SETI; I'm still finishing up some Einstein Units. I'm still on the GTX-750TI SC cards with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM on Each GPU. I'm also still using the Non-Special CUDA75 App in BOINC.

Is all of this still up to par? Do I need to change anything before starting to crunch for SETI, again? (I don't want to screw this up and have Inconclusives nor Errors.)

Thanks for the assistance. :-)


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

It should work OK. The main items to remember is the Special App still doen't work well after having a task suspended. The way around that is to set the Checkpoint higher than the longest estimated run-time. The 750 is the slowest GPU so it has the longest run-time of around 12 minutes with the BLC5 tasks where a 1060 is closer to 6 minutes for the longest task. Another workaround is to just don't stop it, my 750 Ti machine is currently showing a 33 day uptime.

The other main problem is with GPUs with less than 4 GB of video ram. The latest Apps and systems are easy to run a 2 GB card out of memory by just opening a few Tabs in a Web Browser. From my experience Safari is a video ram Hog while FireFox is more of a CPU Hog. I would recommend FireFox as I can easily run a 3 GB card out of video memory using Safari, so far, I haven't run a 4 GB card out of video memory. I don't recommend anyone buy any more 2 GB cards. While running zi3v cuda 9 in Ubuntu 16.04 my 2 GB GTX 960 at unroll 8 is currently showing 1709 mb used without a monitor attached. If I attach a monitor it won't even start the task. The GTX 950 at unroll 6 also has 2 GB and with the monitor attached it is showing 1750 used out of 1994 mb. There isn't much left there.

Other than that, it should work fine.

It should work OK. The main items to remember is the Special App still doen't work well after having a task suspended. The way around that is to set the Checkpoint higher than the longest estimated run-time. The 750 is the slowest GPU so it has the longest run-time of around 12 minutes with the BLC5 tasks where a 1060 is closer to 6 minutes for the longest task. Another workaround is to just don't stop it, my 750 Ti machine is currently showing a 33 day uptime.

The other main problem is with GPUs with less than 4 GB of video ram. The latest Apps and systems are easy to run a 2 GB card out of memory by just opening a few Tabs in a Web Browser. From my experience Safari is a video ram Hog while FireFox is more of a CPU Hog. I would recommend FireFox as I can easily run a 3 GB card out of video memory using Safari, so far, I haven't run a 4 GB card out of video memory. I don't recommend anyone buy any more 2 GB cards. While running zi3v cuda 9 in Ubuntu 16.04 my 2 GB GTX 960 at unroll 8 is currently showing 1709 mb used without a monitor attached. If I attach a monitor it won't even start the task. The GTX 950 at unroll 6 also has 2 GB and with the monitor attached it is showing 1750 used out of 1994 mb. There isn't much left there.

Other than that, it should work fine.

I am on FF Quantum, 64-Bit. Ver 58.0.2. I do keep open MANY tabs; more than 20. (Again, NOT using the Special App... Just on regular CUDA75 App from quite awhile ago.)

Full System Specs:

[Hackintosh Specs:]

2-14-2018

[NEW System Specs:]

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P MOBO Ver 1.6 with BIOS Ver FD - 2009
Processor: Intel Quad Core Extreme, QX9650 at 3GHz
CoolerMaster Hyper212 EVO Copper Pipe/Aluminum Heat Sink and Fan
16GB DDR2, 800MHz, Dual Channel A-Tech RAM, NON-ECC - (4x4GB Sticks)
One ATAPI CD/DVD ROM Drive
One Western Digital Black 1TB SATA Hard Drive - MAC OS X, El Capitan 10.11.6
One Western Digital Black 1TB SATA Hard Drive - Win 7 Pro, SP-1, x64
One Western Digital Laptop Drive in External USB Case - MAC OS Time Machine
Clover Boot Loader/Manager Ver 3320
Two EVGA GTX-750TI SC cards with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM Each Card - NO SLI
ASUS VE228 22" Wide Screen Monitor - HDMI Connected, 1920x1080p at 60Hz and 32 Bit Color Depth
Corsair CX750 ATX PSU at 750W
Antec 300 ATX Mid Tower Case - Side Panel off, two case fans installed, with 3-Port Hot Swap Bay - Front Loading. (Hot Swap Bay takes up 2 Full Size Bays, and mounts underneath already mounted ATAPI CD-DVD ROM Drive.)
Logitech M510 Optical Wireless Mouse
Logitech USB Microphone
Logitech Extreme 3D PRO USB Joystick
Altec Lansing 45.1, two Satellite and one Subwoofer speaker set
One USB 3.0 4-Port Hub - (Logitech USB Mouse Fob and Time Machine Drive connected.)
MACALLY USB Keyboard, (Full Size), with 10-Key.
Hackintosh Multibeast Software making system "THINK" it's a MAC Pro 3,1 - 2008 Series, Xeon Quad Core at 3GHz

ESET CyberSecurity for MAC

Paragon NTFS 15 - NTFS Read and Write software for MAC
Paragon ExtFS - Linux Read and Write software for MAC
TechTool Pro 9.6

GOG Games: 7th Guest, 11th Hour, Wing Commander III

VirtualBox with multiple VM Systems: Win XP Pro x64 VM, Win 2000 VM, UBUNTU GNOME 16.04 LTS VM, UBUNTU GNOME 14.04 LTS VM

Blizzard Games: StarCraft:Remastered, and StarCraft-2

Apache OpenOffice Suite

Kindle App for MAC

VLC Video Software for MAC

BOINC 7.6.22 Number Crunching software - SETI@Home Project, and Einstein@Home Project running on GPUs

[Repairs and Upgrades over Past Two Weeks:]

New ASUS VE228 22" Wide LCD HDMI Monitor at 1920x1080p - 32 Bit Color Depth
Changed BIOS Battery - Set BIOS Clock to UTC for Win 7 Pro x64
Corsair CX750 PSU - (Needed additional power, preparing to Upgrade video cards to EVGA GTX-980TI cards.)
Corsair 140mm Case Fan at top of Antec Case
Re-cemented Heat Sink with Arctic Silver 5
Upgraded used Patriot RAM to NEW A-Tech Lifetime RAM
Installed Internal hard drive bay to support 3 Hot Swap Drives - (MAC OS X, proposed new Linux, and proposed new Time Machine drives.)
Moved Windows Drive to Internal case slot underneath Drive Expansion Bays; Win Drive mounted with Side Rails.

Original MAC OS drive failing - Cloned drive to new 1TB drive, MAC OS Drive in top hot swap bay position.

RMA-d failing drive to Western Digital. Upon receipt of Warranty Replacement Drive, will install UBUNTU GNOME 16.04 LTS at middle hot swap bay location.

Proposed new Time Machine Drive to be installed in lower hot swap bay location.

Total Spent To Date: $1,528.00 - (Over past 4 years.)

Proposed new spending: $75.00 - New Western Digital Black 1TB SATA Drive for MAC OS Time Machine in lower Hot Swap Drive Bay.

[WD RMA Drive:]

Received Upgrade from WD, 2-12-2018. Now have one 2TB WD Black SATA Drive. Will re-clone Hackintosh Drive to new 2TB Unit. Will reuse 1TB Drive for UBUNTU GNOME 16.04 LTS.


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

Given the performance, reliability & price of SSDs these days, I don't know why people bother with a HDD for anything other than large storage requirements (ie 4TB & larger).

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Given the performance, reliability & price of SSDs these days, I don't know why people bother with a HDD for anything other than large storage requirements (ie 4TB & larger).

I know that SSDs are faster; but, I still prefer the stability of hard drives. I've read other Threads, Posts, and notes from SSD users that these things are "finicky" and do fail prematurely. Even having one's OS on an SSD, one STILL needs a hard drive for routine and repeated drive access to Data, Programs, etc.

I'll stick with Hard Drives.


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

I do keep open MANY tabs; more than 20. (Again, NOT using the Special App... Just on regular CUDA75 App from quite awhile ago.)

I don't think that will work.
As I said, the New CUDA App will use most of the video ram on a 2 GB GPU, it's been that way for a while. If you try to use more than another couple hundred MBs the App will crash with a failed cufft plan error. Then it will launch the next task, which will fail in about 6 secs with another failed cufft plan error. In a very short time all the GPU tasks will be listed as errors. If you must have that many Tabs open, I suggest you Not use the Special App but instead use the OpenCL App which is about Twice as fast as the old Baseline CUDA Apps on the BLC tasks. There is a new version at CA which should work better on the Hacks, nVidia_r3709&CPUr3711.7z If you don't want to use the CPU just remove the CPU sections from the app_info.xml. The only use for the Old Baseline CUDA App is on the older pre-fermi cards which still work better with the CUDA Baseline App.

On my machine, any system newer than Yosemite takes quite a while to boot from a mechanical HDD and preforms noticeably slower than a SSD. I have Sierra on the SSD and the machine works as well as a new machine. I have a Samsung 250 GB 840 series and it's been running SETI fine since it was new. How old is the 840 series? It has to be a couple of years or more. Much, much better than running macOS on a HDD.

Whoa, according to this it's almost 4 years old, https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147189
How time flies when having fun. It is in this picture from 2014. It's the one on the right, so small you can only see the connectors;



Almost 4 years without a single problem, and still going strong.

I've read other Threads, Posts, and notes from SSD users that these things are "finicky" and do fail prematurely.

Yep
Just like HDDs, except they are more reliable & so much faster than HDDs

Even having one's OS on an SSD, one STILL needs a hard drive for routine and repeated drive access to Data, Programs, etc.

Utter nonsense.
Seriously.

3 years ago now a Tech web site tested several consumer SSDs to death.
Most average users wouldn't write a TB (Terra Byte) in a year. Even heavy users would be lucky to write a few TB in a year. The first SSD died after 100TB of writes. Another made it to 600TB. The final survivor made it to over 2PB.
The SSD Endurance Experiment

I'll stick with Hard Drives.

Your choice, but it's based on personal preference, not facts.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I’be has a MacBook Air with an SSD for what will be 7 years this year. Never had a single issue. They are far more reliable the HDDs just because they lack moving parts. MacOS supports TRIM these days so they will practically never die from writing to them too many times.

---

@TBar,

I've Downloaded the OpenCL App, (r3709); but, will continue with the REGULAR CUDA75 App from 1.5 years ago... I want to see what that CUDA App will do, now that I'm on 10.11.6 and CUDA 8.0.71. A year and a half ago, the CUDA75 App allowed me to run 2 Units at a time per GPU, AND let me have open the 20+ Tabs in FF that I usually have open... If this still works, I will just keep going with what I have.

Just grabbed a bunch of work; ETA by BOINC 7.6.22 is approx 35 Min to complete each WU. I still have some Einstein Units to complete, first; I'm working on them as I type this.


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

MacOS supports TRIM these days so they will practically never die from writing to them too many times.

They will eventually die due to too many writes as they have a limited life span when it comes to writing data. However that time is most likely a decade or 4 after the laptop itself has died, or just been replaced.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

[Update:]

Computer ID: 7952666

Just finished several Units. I'm averaging about 41 Min (+/- a couple of seconds from WU to WU) and am running 2 Units at a time per GPU. (Total of 4 Units at a time.) NO CPU crunching at all. I'm quite pleased with the crunching time. Now I have to wait and see if these validate "normally".


TL

[EDIT:]

One Unit actually Validated right away. Earned 61 Credits for it. :-)


[EDIT 2:]

Just re-enabled my crunching time parameters. System will crunch from 6 PM to 9 AM Pacific Time. Crunching to resume in 1 Hour and 1 Min. :-)


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

Meanwhile, my 750 Ti is running the same BLC11 in around 7.5 minutes using the CUDA zi3v App.
I'm glad you're happy running the same task about 3 times slower.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=6407390125
I'm not going to mention the 1060 times.

Meanwhile, my 750 Ti is running the same BLC11 in around 7.5 minutes using the CUDA zi3v App.
I'm glad you're happy running the same task about 3 times slower.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=6407390125
I'm not going to mention the 1060 times.

Yes, but, I'm UNWILLING to relinquish my FF Browsing because of the REQUIREMENT to take up ALL of my GDDR5 VRAM! The WHOLE POINT is to be able to USE my computer while crunching. ;-) :-)


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

I don't have any problems on my Mac using the 1050 Ti, I can open as many Web Pages as I desire. Or, do just about anything else as well.
You should try the OpenCL App, even it's about twice as fast as that Ancient CUDA App, and it doesn't use much vRam either. You're using about the slowest Mac App on SETI.

I don't have any problems on my Mac using the 1050 Ti, I can open as many Web Pages as I desire. Or, do just about anything else as well.
You should try the OpenCL App, even it's about twice as fast as that Ancient CUDA App, and it doesn't use much vRam either. You're using about the slowest Mac App on SETI.

Well, I've Extracted the OpenCL App, (7zx Application), all SEEMS to have extracted; BUT, ALL Text Documents are EMPTY! I tried TextEdit, I tried TextWrangler, and NOTHING... All the .txt Files and the AppInfo File are EMPTY!

Any ideas??? I wanted to read everything so that if I had questions on how to install, I'd have some basic knowledge before asking said questions...


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

Whatever you are using to unzip 7z files should be removed using AppCleaner.app, and then install this, https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/32512/keka
Those files expand properly using Keka.

Then change what's in the mb_cmdline_mac_OpenCL_NV_sah.txt to the following;
-sbs 256 -spike_fft_thresh 2048 -tune 1 64 1 4 -period_iterations_num 16

Whatever you are using to unzip 7z files should be removed using AppCleaner.app, and then install this, https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/32512/keka
Those files expand properly using Keka.

Then change what's in the mb_cmdline_mac_OpenCL_NV_sah.txt to the following;
-sbs 256 -spike_fft_thresh 2048 -tune 1 64 1 4 -period_iterations_num 16

Keka works... Changed Default Application for Archiver to Keka. (Got 7zx App 1.5 years ago as MAC CANNOT use 7Zip... 7zx worked, until now...) All Text Files are now readable.

Thanks. I will go through all the documents, and then come back here with any questions. In the meantime, I've set BOINC to NNT for SETI. (While I'm sure I CAN install the OpenCL App and remove the CUDA75 and the existing Units SHOULD pick up on OpenCL; I feel better running them all down to completion before changing Apps.)


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

What about App_Config.xml??? (I'm currently using one with the CUDA75 App to run 2 Units at a time...) I'm assuming that I want to ONLY run one Unit at a time...??? (Unless the OpenCL App will allow me to run two Units at a time, like CUDA...???)

Found this in another Thread; BUT, it's for a 980 Card... What would need to change in it for a 750TI SC?

"<app_config>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_v8</app_name>
<plan_class>opencl_nvidia_SoG</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>1</avg_ncpus>
<ngpus>1</ngpus>
<cmdline>-sbs 1024 -period_iterations_num 1 -hp -high_prec_timer -high_perf -tt 1500</cmdline>
</app_version>
<app_version>
<app_name>astropulse_v7</app_name>
<plan_class>opencl_nvidia_100</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>1</avg_ncpus>
<ngpus>1</ngpus>
<cmdline>-unroll 28 -oclFFT_plan 256 16 256 -ffa_block 12288 -ffa_block_fetch 6144 -tune 1 64 4 1 -tune 2 64 4 1 -hp </cmdline>
</app_version>
<project_max_concurrent>6</project_max_concurrent>
</app_config>"

Thanks in advance. :-)


TL

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos